Feathers ('till they're all on the ground)
by Metronome I Hear
Summary: He thinks he loves her. He dreams of broken fingers. He wakes and gives her roses. He sleeps and eats her heart.


She runs. Why is it always running? Running running running. From responsibilities and monsters and blood and love and everything they've ever wanted for themselves. And he hates it, how much he loves it, that twisted dance they seem to enjoy. Where he kisses her palm and dreams of breaking her bones one by one. Where he offers to start a war, and she only laughs.

"Like you would," she would say when they lie in the sheets at sunset, the world on fire and crumbling around them, but they pay it no mind. This madness is a familiar one, one they indulge in even when any sane person would run. They never have before, ( _not when he looked a two hundred year old poltergeist in the eye and smiled, not when a snake bore down on her with eyes of death and she raised her blade, not when they both stood and fought until the end when bodies lay scattered around them, the aftermath of war swept through the lands_ ) and they never shall again. Just them, she and he, he and she, together until the world ends.

"I would," he would whisper against her skin, trailing the words up her stomach, her chest, until he nests his face against the hollow of her throat. "Just give the word." It would be so easy to bite down, to break the skin, to feel blood gush around his tongue and have flesh stuck between his teeth… and she would laugh, because she always does, in all their lives, a cocky smirk on her lips and millenia in her eyes. She is powerful, he knows, Death in human form, and he, he is-

Well.

He's just the same, isn't he?

And how Tsunayoshi can ever look at him and think " _human"_ has him baffled. How the others, the guardians, might look at him and smile… They know, he knows they do, what he's done, in this life at least. All the horrors and atrocities he's committed, murder and slaughter that he's delighted in.

And she's just the same, through she won't admit it, and Mukuro _loves_ it, loves _her_ , and he _hates_ it, hates _her_ -how much she is able to ensnare him in her spells, a smirk on her lips, a knife in her hand, and how easily he follows.

He's traveled through hell and back, stood on the corpses of his enemies, bathed in their blood. He's lived lives as a shadow, and beings beyond human comprehension, lived as something unique and like no other…

And all the voices of all their lives clamor in his head when he chases her, through snow and ice and fire and heat, contradictory and impossible and he craved every moment of it. ( _But isn't he a mist? Hasn't that always been his specialty?_ )

And she turns around to face him, fierce and proud, and he meets her with equal fever and they fight.

He thinks he loves her. He dreams of broken fingers. He wakes and gives her roses. He sleeps and eats her heart.

How long has he chased her? How long have they ran? Since they first met, boy and owl, twenty million lives ago?

Through fog and forests and oceans deep. Through skies so high, the never ending blue and he-

He-

Chrome ( _Death_ ) kisses Mukuro ( _Life_ ) with blood stained lips, and he's never been happier.

…

How does it begin? In the first life or the second? The third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth? The eighteenth, the twenty-third? The forty-seventh, the fifty-eighth? When they first laid eye on each other, owl and boy, or when they first joined hands, boy and boy, or when they first fought, woman and woman, or when they first died, side by side, in that very first life. Owl and boy. Boy and owl. What a pair they've made... They've laughed and cried, screamed and cheered, celebrated and mourned. They've slaughtered and laughed, murdered and cried. They've clung to each other during so many sleepless nights and-

She ( _Death_ ) reaches out for him-

For him-

And runs her fingers along his feathers. "You're very loyal," she whispers like its a secret ( _it is_ ) to be forever lost on the wind. "So loyal, even after all this time."

"Only to you," he ( _Life_ ) seems to say, though he cannot speak, not in this life, when he is owl again. ( _So close to that first time-_ ) But she understands him regardless and smiles, fingers digging into his feathers. She wants to pluck them all out one by one until there are none left and he can never fly again.

And they die again and they live again and they are swept up into another life. And she is a she again and he is a he again and he is human and she is barely and neither of them have ever been very human at all.

( _She used to think people were lying when they said he looked like Death_ )

And he, Harry, the first of the lot, sees her, Hedwig, for the first time in an alley. And she, Nagi, the latest of the lot, sees him, Mukuro, for the first time in a hospital room. And she, Hedwig, the first of the lot, sees him, Harry, for the first time in a cage, and he, Mukuro, the latest of the lot, sees her, Nagi, for the first time from a tank.

Nothing has changed. Nothing at all.

But they are the same again, intertwined so closely it's hard to tell where one of them starts and the other one ends, and they walk to the trials and they fight. They run. They stand and fight and bleed and cry and run because that is what they have always done, and that is what they always will, ( _when soldiers come, all lined up straight, and there they are, among their number_ ) that is always what they shall.

 _But this is alright,_ she thinks with blood splattered on her cheek and an army at her back, her _Family,_ her friends… She has comrades this time around, other than her precious bird, and that makes things easier.

Round and round time goes, and Chrome ( _Nagi, Harry, Death_ ) keeps fighting.

 **AN: You can thank the KHR Artists and Writers Getaway for this particular piece. It wouldn't be nearly as good without them!**


End file.
